Changes that protect or increase human rights should always be welcomed – but we should check motives, too.

North Korea and Cuba have struck up a friendship that is particularly bizarre given each country’s attitudes towards children. North Korean children, left, live an Orwellian nightmare at the hands of its socialist government while Cuban children, right, are revered, supported and celebrated.
The Associated Press
November 19, 2018

The reverberations of JFK's assassination can still be felt to this day in the paranoid and racialised politics of the American right

Sections of a Brazilian slave ship from the 19th century.
Robert Walsh, as shown on www.slaveryimages.org, compiled by Jerome Handler and Michael Tuite and sponsored by the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities." caption="A Brazilian slave ship from the 19th century." zoomable="true
August 23, 2018

Merchants from Brazil, Cuba, North America and the British West Indies traded goods grown by slaves on plantations, for more slaves.

Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez was a major financier of Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega, seen here at a 2016 commemoration on the third anniversary of the socialist leader’s death.
Reuters/Marco Bello
August 21, 2018

American policymakers and lawmakers are floating unilateral sanctions against Russia, Iran and even Turkey in an effort to change behavior. But research shows sanctions only work in narrow circumstances.

Were foreign diplomats and tourists attacked with a 'sonic weapon' – or was it something else? Ultrasound researchers demonstrate a rational, evidence-based explanation.

Rohingya Muslim women who fled Myanmar for Bangladesh stretch their arms out to collect aid distributed by relief agencies in this September 2017 photo. A campaign of killings, rape and arson attacks by security forces and Buddhist-aligned mobs have sent more than 850,000 of the country’s 1.3 million Rohingya fleeing.
(AP Photo/Dar Yasin, File)
January 2, 2018